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43 percent of California Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in private Medicare coverage — mostly Medicare Advantage plans, but there are also some California residents with Medicare Cost plans.

28 insurers offer Medigap plans in California and more than half a million people have Medigap coverage in the state. Medigap insurers are required to offer coverage to people under 65, but not if they have end-stage renal disease.

California residents can select from among 30 stand-alone Part D prescription plans in 2019, with premiums ranging from about $13 to $118 per month.

Medicare enrollment in California

Nationwide, 60 million people are covered by Medicare — and more than 10 percent of them are in California. As of mid-2019, 6,256,554 California residents had Medicare coverage. But that’s less than 16 percent of the state’s nearly 40 million people, versus more than 18 percent of the United States population that is enrolled in Medicare.

Most Medicare beneficiaries are eligible for coverage because they’re at least 65 years old. But Medicare eligibility is also triggered when a person has been receiving disability benefits for 24 months. Nationwide, 16 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries are eligible due to disability. It’s a little lower in California, with just 12 percent of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled due to a disability.

But 40 percent of Medicare beneficiaries in California were enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans as of 2017, compared with an average of 33 percent nationwide. Forty-three percent of California’s Medicare beneficiaries had private plans as of November 2018 (as opposed to Original Medicare; that figure does not include people who had private coverage to supplement Original Medicare). Most of those enrollees have Medicare Advantage, there are some enrollees in California who have Medicare Cost plans, which is another form of private Medicare coverage.

Medicare’s annual election period (October 15 to December 7 each year) allows Medicare beneficiaries the opportunity to switch between Medicare Advantage and Original Medicare and/or add or drop a Medicare Part D prescription plan. As of 2019, Medicare Advantage enrollees also have the option to switch to a different Advantage plan or to Original Medicare during the Medicare Advantage open enrollment period, which runs from January 1 to March 31.

Medigap in California

Original Medicare does not limit out-of-pocket costs, so most enrollees maintain some form of supplemental coverage. More than half of Original Medicare beneficiaries receive their supplemental coverage through an employer-sponsored plan or Medicaid. But for those who don’t, Medigap plans (also known as Medicare supplement plans) are designed to pay some or all of the out-of-pocket costs (deductibles and coinsurance) that Medicare beneficiaries would otherwise have to pay themselves.

There are 28 insurers in California that offer Medigap plans. And as of 2016, there were 514,026 California residents with Medigap coverage. Although California has by far the nation’s largest Medicare population, there were five states where more people were enrolled in Medigap plans as of 2016. California’s larger-than-average Medicare Advantage enrollment means that fewer people have Original Medicare, and Medigap plans can only be used with Original Medicare.

Medigap plans are sold by private insurers, but the plans are standardized under federal rules, with ten different plan designs (differentiated by letters, A through N). The benefits offered by a particular plan (Plan C, Plan F, etc.) are the same regardless of which insurer is selling the plan. So plan comparisons are much easier for Medigap policies than for other types of health insurance; consumers can base their decision on premiums and less tangible factors like customer service, since the benefits themselves are uniform. All Medigap insurers must offer at least Plan A. And if they offer any other plans, they must offer at least Plan C or Plan F to enrollees who were already eligible for Medicare prior to 2020, and at least Plan D or Plan G to enrollees who become eligible for Medicare in 2020 or beyond.

California does not dictate how Medigap insurers can adjust premiums based on age, so most Medigap insurers in the state use attained-age rating, which means that premiums increase as a person gets older. There are a few insurers in California that use issue-age rating instead, with premiums based on the age the person was when they enrolled. Community rating (also known as “no age” rating) means that rates do not vary with age at all, but there are no Medigap insurers in California that use community rating (several states require community rating or issue-age rating, but California is not among them).

Unlike other private Medicare coverage (Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans), federal rules do not provide an annual open enrollment window for Medigap plans. Instead, federal rules provide a one-time six-month window when Medigap coverage is guaranteed-issue. This window starts when a person is at least 65 and enrolled in Medicare Part B (you must be enrolled in both Part A and Part B to buy a Medigap plan). But California law gives Medigap enrollees a 30-day window each year, following their birthday, when they can switch to any other Medigap plan with equal or lesser benefits, without medical underwriting.

People who aren’t yet 65 can enroll in Medicare if they’re disabled and have been receiving disability benefits for at least two years, and more than 700,000 Medicare beneficiaries in California are under 65. Federal rules do not guarantee access to Medigap plans for people who are under 65, but the majority of the states, including California, have stepped in to ensure at least some access to private Medigap plans for disabled enrollees under the age of 65 (federal legislation, including 2018’s H.R.6431, has been considered to expand access to Medigap plans to all Medicare beneficiaries, regardless of age, but the rules have thus far not changed).

Article 6 of California’s insurance statute requires Medigap insurers in the state to offer at least plans A, B, D, and G (if offered by the company to any applicants; note that this used to be plans A, B, C, and F, but S.B.784 was enacted in 2019 to swap Plans C and F for Plans D and G, since Plans C and F are no longer available — nationwide — to newly-eligible Medicare beneficiaries as of 2020) to people under age 65 who are eligible for Medicare due to disability. The insurers must also offer either plan K or Plan L, if offered by the company, or Plan M or Plan N, if offered by the company. But none of these provisions apply to Medicare beneficiaries under age 65 who are eligible for Medicare due to having end-stage renal disease (kidney failure).

California’s statute allows Medigap insurers to charge higher premiums for people under age 65. But coverage must be guaranteed-issue during the six months after a person enrolls in Medicare Part B (regardless of age) or the six months after a person is determined to be retroactively eligible for Medicare Part B. And insurers cannot pay differing broker commissions based on the age of the Medigap enrollee (ie, insurers are not allowed to use lower commissions to dissuade brokers from selling Medigap plans to people under age 65).

Although the Affordable Care Act eliminated pre-existing condition exclusions in most of the private health insurance market, those regulations don’t apply to Medigap plans. Medigap insurers can impose a pre-existing condition waiting period of up to six months, if you didn’t have at least six months of continuous coverage prior to your enrollment. And if you apply for a Medigap plan after your initial enrollment window closes (assuming you aren’t eligible for one of the limited guaranteed-issue rights), the insurer can look back at your medical history in determining whether to accept your application, and at what premium.

Medicare Part D in California

Original Medicare does not cover outpatient prescription drugs. More than half of Original Medicare beneficiaries have supplemental coverage via an employer-sponsored plan or Medicaid, and these plans often include prescription coverage. But Medicare enrollees without creditable drug coverage need to obtain Medicare Part D prescription coverage. Part D coverage can be purchased as a stand-alone plan, or as part of a Medicare Advantage plan that includes Part D prescription drug coverage.

As of late 2018, there were more than 4.9 million Medicare beneficiaries in California with Part D prescription coverage. About 2.3 million had stand-alone Part D plans and nearly 2.6 million had Medicare Advantage plans with built-in Part D coverage.

Medicare spending in California

In 2016, Original Medicare’s average per-beneficiary spending in California was $9,442, based on data standardized to eliminate regional differences in payment rates (the data did not include costs for Medicare Advantage).

Nationwide, average per beneficiary Original Medicare spending was $9,533 per enrollee, so Medicare spending in California was about 3 percent below the national average. Per-beneficiary Original Medicare spending was highest in Louisiana, at $11,399, and lowest in Hawaii, at just $6,441.

You can read more about Medicare in California in our state Medicare guide. You can also contact HICAP, California’s Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program, if you have questions related to Medicare coverage in California.